Adios Buenos Aires

After a month and a half in Buenos Aires (Bs.As.), it's almost time for us to move on. Our next stop is Patagonia to see the glaciers and to do some trekking, and then off to Bolivia. Needless to stay, we've decided to extend our trip, yet again, until the May(ish) time frame.

Buenos Aires has been great for us. We've met some wonderful people, had some great Spanish teachers, visited practically all the tourist areas of the city (and branched out a little today to Plaza Once but didn't find it very interesting), had our friend Betty visit for a week, been able to “play house” in our temporary apartment, and seen a "real" futbol (soccer in Spanish) game. I think the biggest challenge for us, or at least for me, is trying to pack 8-months of our lives into two measly bags.

Although Buenos Aires did feel a bit like home for us, there have also been enough differences to realize this is not home. I've come up with a list of things I will miss and not miss about Buenos Aires to help illustrate why this can (and doesn't) feel like home.

Ten things I will miss about Buenos Aires:

1) Chori-pan. Where will I ever find something as simple and delicious as Chori-pan in the states or in Bolivia, our next stop?


2) The plethora of flats in all the stores for less than $50.

3) Homemade pasta. Although we are both pretty tired of the lack of variety in the Argentinian food selection, I'm sure we will crave the homemade pasta, which is readily available at every corner in Buenos Aires.

4) Empanadas. Although Wilson did get food poisoning after eating some empanadas I made during a cooking class, I think we'll both miss it (especially the Argentinian ones)!


5) Plentiful cabs in the streets, unlike SF. We are always able to get a cab in less than 5 minutes.

6) Public transportation. I have to say the subway and bus systems have been great.

7) Our bidet. One day we will buy a Japanese toilet with an in-toilet bidet.

8) Our new friends and teachers.
9) Coffee. Must say, after Europe, Buenos Aires has some of the best coffee.

10) Delivery services. You can find everything delivered here, including coffee in a glass, pizza and pasta, and ice cream (yes, ice cream!). We even got 2 kilos delivered, by accident. I think we'll have to throw an ice cream party to get rid of it all.

Five things (yep, just 5) I am happy to leave in Buenos Aires:


1) All the mierda de perros (dog poop) in the sidewalks and streets. I guarantee you will find shit on every block. It's disgusting, and at night and when it rains, it's even worse because you won't find out it's there until after you step in it.

2) Sidewalks with unmarked areas of wet cement. You only find out it's wet after you step in it. And marked areas with wet cement never give you an alternate route to walk. You are stuck walking in the street.

3) The awful bus and car pollution in the streets. We get surprises in the evening when we blow our noses (our friend Betty did too).

4) Dripping air conditioners. Nearly every time I walk in the street, something drips on me. The first couple times, I thought it was drizzle from the sky. I quickly found out the drips were from the air conditioning systems – great way to cool off!

5) Hang drying. Our apartment didn't include a dryer so we've spent hours, ok just minutes, hang drying. Although I know this is more green, we much prefer our dryers.

Buenos Aires

First Impresssions II

Life in Buenos Aires has been good to us so far. It's a architecturally charming city with lots of good bars and cheap food. As is well known, Argentinians love there beef, with every man woman and child eating an average of just under 150 lbs of beef a year. Right now, we're actually thinking that perhaps they consume so much beef because there's not that else to eat. Literally every other restaurant in Buenos Aires is barbecue and pasta house. You can certainly get other food, but the variety isn't quite what we expected for what is considered such an international city. During their characteristically long and very late lunches, it's not uncommon to see a family surrounding a platter piled eight inches high with ribs, steak, sausages and offal and they're devouring it like they're auditioning for something out of dawn of the dead. That said, if you do like steak, it is very good and cheap here.

As we mentioned before, people all eat very late in Buenos Aires. We originally thought this was the habit of the clubbing set, but in fact, everyone eats late. On a Friday night, a restaurants seem to be at their busiest between eleven and one in the morning, and they'll be filled with old and young alike, including senior citizens with walkers and toddlers along for a family dinner. Not surprisingly, the bars and clubs pick up well after what we're acustomed to. We seem to repeat the same experience in every city, showing up at a club and one-thirty in the morning and staring across the table at each other since we're the only ones there. No one goes dancing before 2:30 here (except us). I think we seem like party poopers when we retire at 4:30 in the morning but we just explain that we're just an old married couple.

I'm not sure how much of the population here goes out so late but we have a hard time reconciling their late night partying with a normal work or school schedule. Perhaps that's why their economy has been a wreck for so long.

One annoying facet of living in Buenos Aires right now is a shortage of coins. While the government has reportedly minted more coins this year than ever before, they are still in short supply. The problem is that everyone needs coins to ride the bus and there just aren't enough to go around. This lack of coins leads to hording by everyone else who needs them as well. For instance, a store would rather lose your sale than have to give you change sometimes, or you simply need to buy more stuff. While nothing has really been proved, the bus companies are suspected of hording the coins and then selling them on the black market for a premium. A law was enacted forcing banks to exchange a certain amount of currency into coins for their depositors, bankers just ignored this law, saying that the coins would just end up in the black market (Incidentally, they write a lot of unenforceable laws here. One such law requires clothing stores to carry plus sizes for women. This one is likely ignored as much as the one about banks giving out coins).

With our own apartment, we spend a lot of time watching cable television. While I like watching TV in any part of the world, here it's actually helps improve our Spanish comprehension, making it theoretically good for us. My favorite channel is Cronica TV, which is low brow entertainment at its finest. It seems like every day a segment airs about the destruction of an office/house/store of a child rapist by angry neighbors. It's a winning formula, including several interviews with the parents of the victim, complaints by the neighbors about the laziness of the police and of course the ritual destruction of the rapist's domicile or place of employment. In today's airing, the rapist's little brick house was knocked down with a sledgehammer by the tearful father of the victim. What's always puzzling to me is the absence of law enforcement during these outbursts. But as has been explained to me, Cronica TV always gets to a crime scene before the police, and generally the police don't do anything anyway, especially in the poorer areas of the city where the immigrants from Paraguay and Bolivia reside. Cronica TV has offerings about buildings that fall down spontaneously and other types of crime as well. When it's hot, they talk to women in bikinis at the pool, focusing on her ass during the entire interview.

Anyway, that's it for now...

First Month in Argentina

Wilson and I been in Argentina for nearly one month now and have settled nicely into our furnished apartment. We've adjusted to a daily routine of classes, late meals, going to the gym and continuing our exploration of the city.

One of the major differences we've noticed are the very late night dinners here. It's rare to find people in a restaurant at 8:00 pm. In fact, most restaurants don't open until 8:00 or 8:30 pm for dinner. You will find a restaurant start to fill around 10:00 pm and later. Although it was a hard concept to grasp at first, we've quickly adopted to the 10-11 pm dinners, even when we cook at home.

With dinner starting so late, it only makes sense that the bars and discotecas start even later. Last weekend we went to a bar that served Happy Hour until 12:00 am. Normally, bars have Happy Hours to attract people during unfrequented times. We met some friends at 10:30 pm and noticed we were the only people there. It was not until 12:00 am that people started trickling in.

Since we started our evening out earlier than the rest of the Portenos (known as the folks in Buenos Aires according to our good friend Jaime who was nearly a local here :)), we headed over to a club and were the first to arrive (and it wasn't early - 1:00 am). As such, we were, again, the first ones there. The club started filling up around 2:30 am.　We were pooped by 4:45 am and were some of the first people to leave. We asked our Argentinian friend (we'll just call her Argentinian since she lives here but she's really from Brazil) told us that people stay at the clubs until 6 or 7 am in the morning. Call me old but we didn't have the energy to stay out until then.

Other Findings (mainly in the food category)

We've made some other little (and not the most worldly) discoveries in Argentina. For instance, two of Wilson's biggest discoveries has been learning to use the bidet (he swears we'll have to get one when we get new home) and dulce de leche. He eats it (the dulce de leche) regularly with bread and is addicted to the bidet. It's a shame the US never embraced this European discovery.

For me, it has been choripan (a local sandwich with thick white bread and two fatty sausages in the middle) and shoes. Since I have awful feet with the biggest bunions in Northern America, flats are the best type of shoes for me. I've discovered every store carries a majority of flats with different styles.

We've also found some of the best, cheap steaks and wines here in Argentina. Some of our favorites include lomo (filet mignon) and bife de chorizo (I think it's equivalent to a NY strip). For the wines, we've really enjoyed the Malbec wines. Prices are unbelievably cheap compared to the states. Our favorite is Finca Flichman's 2007 Malbec.

One Month to Go
It scares me a bit that we only have one month left of this trip. A part of me wants to go home but a big part of me wants to stay. Going back to reality is always a little scary especially given the economy at its current state. I will try not to think about it until the day we leave.

On another note, our friend Betty is coming to visit us this week so that should be fun playing tour guide and showing her the sites.

Our New Apartment in Buenos Aires

We´ve finally moved into our new apartment in Buenos Aires. For anyone that wants to write us (or even better, visit), our address is 2225 Bonpland, Piso 2, B, Buenos Aires.

I´ve included some shots of our new place (not the best shots of the rooms since our place was a mess, after just one day, and I just threw the sheets on top of our two twin beds - yep, we are sleeping on two twins pushed together). We do have a SPARE room so please come and visit. We are here until the end of March.



Besides a day of headache and haggling for Wilson, moving-in was a breeze. Apparently in Argentina, you have to pay everything up front in cash before you move in. Unfortunately, we only gave ourselves a day and a half to look for an apartment. Given we had to pay everything in cash, our ATMs had a limit on the amount of money we were able to take out. If we were nationals, we can simply write a check but since we are not (no, we couldn´t pass as Argentinians), we had to pay everything in cash. Luckily, this agency gave us 48 hours to come up with everything after we moved in (the headaches of being a renter).

One other note - I went to the post office yesterday and can you believe they ran out of stamps... I was able to buy stamps today at a stationery store. The guy would only sell me the stamps if he put them on my postcards and mailed them out for me. He said it was a law for stores other than the post office to sell stamps specifically for use on letters (cards, etc.) so he could not sell them individually. Interesting little details of other countries.

And did I forget to mention, you guys should all come visit before we go back to reality! :)

Argentina

After spending over a month in Colombia, we are finally at the last leg of our trip: Argentina. Our latest project in Buenos Aires has been searching for an apartment to live in. We plan to stay here for about 8 weeks or so, enjoy the city, and learn some more (Argentinian) Spanish. That's also proven to be a challenge since, as Wilson can tell you since he's been doing the research, most of the teachers here only want us to take 2 hours of class. Not sure why, but most of them have told us 2 hours maximum is their recommendation. I think the teachers get bored (or are just lazy) and don't want the same student for more than 2 hours, which I don't blame them. But since we are paying them, we will both shoot for 3 hours a day with the same teacher and a couple hours of conversation (doesn't sound like a lot given our 6-hour Spanish lessons in Guatemala).

The only place we've been so far outside of Buenos Aires is Iguazu Falls. This was one of the most beautiful waterfalls cascade I'd ever seen. I believe they say there are 275 waterfalls cascade into a great gorge at Iguazú at the northern border with Brazil.

We've also visited various districts in Buenos Aires, including the zoo. Here's a funny at the zoo: we watched an adult monkey rub himself on a baby monkey and then stare into the audience with an erection. Although the baby monkey kept biting the adult monkey on the leg, he would continue rubbing himself on it. And though we were all laughing, many parents with little children left the scene very quickly. Couldn't get a photo of this scene but did get a good one of a camel (see photo).

More to come as we learn more about the city and, hopefully, meet more people.

Medellin, Colombia

Wilson and I spent nearly two weeks in Medellin, Colombia, and were both very sad to leave the city. Although there were not a lot of tourist things to see, we both felt this was a very livable city, and met a number of nice people. Not to mention, the weather was perfect (felt like Spring everyday). We stayed in an apart-hotel in the barrio Laureles; a very pleasant area with a number of restaurants and bars within walking distance.

Ironically, we felt Medellin was one of the safest cities we had visited so far in Latin American (other than the Galapagos Islands). The city of Medellin was once one of the most dangerous cities in Latin America during the drug war in the 70s and 80s. According to Wikipedia entry, it's been estimated that around 3,500 were killed during the height of the Cartel, including over 500 police officers in Medellín. Apparently, the Cartel in Medellin lost much of its consolidated power and influence after the death and capture of many of its leading figures, including the death of Paolo Escobar in 1993. From then, the city of Medellin progressively became more secure. Check out the Wikipedia page for more info: (ttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medell%C3%ADn_Cartel

In Medellin, we went to the typical tourist spots including the aquarium, planetarium, Botanical Gardens, some bars and discos. One of the most interesting experience, I thought, was when we hit Medellin's popular discoteca, Mangos. We started the night at another popular discoteca, The Palmaharia, where we only stayed for a couple hours. We watched a couple of men and women dance on the bar, and left early to hit Mangos.

At Mangos, I was told by my teacher that there were dancing enanos (midgets), so when we arrived, we asked one of the employees if we can see them. He said we would have to pay if we wanted them to come out so we declined. We bought a half bottle of vodka and sat at the bar watching the hired dancers do their job: dance.After, Wilson was warmed up to dance so we hit the dance floor where we met some locals who offered us Aguardiente, a local licorice-tasting liquor. We all danced the rest of the night. Around 3 a.m., to our surprise, the enanos came on stage and started dancing. The crowd went wild (including me). It was extremely odd to see the little people come out on stage to dance, and be mocked by the audience. After, we followed our new friends to another club, WILD. By 5 a.m., we were ready to go home.

We also visited a little town right outside of Medellin, Santa Elena. This little town is known for their “shrooms” and as our friend, and Wilson's Spanish teacher, told us, was a town that has created a culture around the “shrooms.” We walked around a local national park (which I forgot the name) and then went for a hike around a hydro-electric plant where we got lost. Although it may sound odd that we would have gotten lost while hiking around a hydro-electric plant, it was in the middle of nowhere and there were absolutely no signs to which direction we were to go. Eventually we found our way back home.

Wilson and I also took a couple of conversational Spanish courses. I feel my Spanish is really getting worse since I haven't been conversing too much with the locals.

Overall, we loved Medellin and felt really safe and comfortable in this city. The people in Medellin are extremely friendly and helpful and you can't beat a city where it is known for its “Eternal Spring.”

Highlights of Cartegena

Mud Bath
Wilson and I spent about 11 days in Cartegena, Colombia. I thought the most exciting part of the trip was when we visited the Volcan de Lodo El Totumo for a mud bath. The 15m mound of mud looked like a volcano from the outside and was over 3000m deep (if I understood our guide correctly). The mud is said to have 51 minerals (i.e. sulfur, iodine, potassium, zinc) with medicinal properties.

The sensation when you first get into the crater of mud is indescribable. I thought the mud would light and watery but it was so thick that everyone stayed afloat. Since the crater was full of people and it was hard to move around or control your limbs in the crater, at times you we got a foot in your chest or ass.

Another interesting observation was there were various types of service providers inside and around the crater. For example, we saw plenty of men being rubbed by other men, just to learn these men were masseuses. We were also wondering where we would put our camera since once we were in this crater, there was no doubt you would get mud everywhere. So we saw a man that took your camera and took photos of you and your friends while you were in the crater. All this for a small tip at the end.

Finally, when we were done, we had to walk over to a local lagoon to wash the mud off. We tried not to give-in to the many women that tried to sell their bathing services (since we've been bathing ourselves for nearly 30 years now without assistance). But at the end, we just gave into the numerous ladies inside the lagoon that offered to bath us for a small fee. My lady even took my bathing suit off and washed it. Believe me, I made sure I kept my body under the water at that time. And although my lady was a bit aggressive, throwing lots of water over my head and face (that was the only way you could get everything off), I thought she did a wonderful job.

After, the nice mud bath we headed to a local beach for some lunch and then headed home.

Beaches
The beaches in Cartegena, mainly in the Boca Grande area, were nothing special compared to some of the beaches in Mexico. The set-up and appearance were just not nice. When you get to the beach, hundreds of vendors will approach you from folks selling canopies (which is a necessity with the warm temperature), shrimp, water, rice, mangoes, beer and jewelry. Although this may be a nuisance, sometimes I do wish there were more vendors selling these types of things in the States.

All the canopies are set very close to the water, which makes the beach look very cramped. And with the thousands of people on the beach, it did not make it relaxing. Not to mention, there was lots of bottles and trash throughout the beach. Nonetheless, it was certainly a great experience and all the local tourists appeared to be enjoying a wonderful day at the beach.

Friends


We were lucky enough to meet some friends in Cartegena. We randomly looked at some apartments for sale just for kicks. Upon visiting the second apartment, we were introduced to a native San Franciscan, Jack, that lived in the building. As such, we kept in contact with him and went to a couple of his gatherings and met some local Colombians. This was a real treat to our trip.


Favorite Restaurant
Although our Cartegena trip was not a life-changing adventure, we did manage to try some great restaurants. Our favorite, hands down, goes to Oh La La!, owned for a Colombian/French couple that served out-of-this-world food. Every dish from our appetizers, main course to dessert were phenomenal. Even the wine here was delicious, a rarity to find. For our appetizer, we tried the provolone cheese with bread and tomatoes. For our main courses, I had a white fish with some delicious bechamel-like sauce, veggies and rice. Wilson had the pork tenderloin, which was absolutely tender and cooked to perfection. Both courses were absolutely delicious. And for dessert, we had the crème broulee. Perfect as well. I had some Sauvignon Blanc to go with my meal (Wilson was sick so he stuck to water, which I believe was also delicious). This restaurants ranks high on our list of favorites. This restaurant was also recently reviewed by the NY Times, which was how we found it. Here's the link: http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/10/26/travel/26choice.html (go to the end of the second page).